On Friday, Feb. 22, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” was screened at the Rubenstein Arts Center Film Theater. A 2024 Prix Spécial and FIPRESCI Prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival, this emotional and heart tugging film was brought to Duke via a collaboration between Duke Cinematic Arts and the Graduate Student Association of Iranians at Duke (GSAID) The screening began with a brief introduced that provided some valuable background.
This film truly was beautifully filmed, and the suspense had you feel every single emotion the actors felt. What’s more, every single minute makes you uncomfortable, creating a truly riveting plot.
The film opens with, “Ficus Religiosa is a tree with an unusual life cycle,” as the movie details the life of the sacred fig. Its seeds are usually found in bird droppings but upon finding a host tree, the Ficus Religiosa strangles the host tree until it can finally stand on its own, a metaphor that serves as the foreground for the plot of this film.
This story revolves around a family in modern Iran, where women are protesting restrictive policies by taking off their hijabs and wearing revealing clothes. Family patriarch Iman (Missagh Zareh), husband of Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) and father to Sana (Setareh Maleki) and Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami), has recently been made an investigative judge and will be responsible for helping decide the fate of thousands of imprisoned protestors.
Iman serves as a symbol of what happens to individuals given power in oppressive countries, with the film humanizing these individuals who — despite their political positions and unpopularity — often come from normal families.
A particularly upsetting scene is when Najmeh cleans the wounds of Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi), a friend of Rezvan who was shot with buckshot during a protest she inadvertently found herself in. This three minute scene serves as an epiphany for Iman’s daughters, who begin realizing the situation that they are in as women in Iran.
The film continually contrasts social media feeds and news on television, highlighting the veil of lies broadcasted on state-owned television. Sana and Revzan are glued to their phones, while their parents rely solely on the television. The phones are a gateway to seeing protests, women being brutally assaulted and the leaking of their father’s personal information. As their consumption of social media increases, their rebellion against their father’s ideals and his job grows.
The introduction of Iman's new government-provided gun, provided for protection from a disgruntled public, is perfectly executed by Rasoulof, and it is the final step in making Iman feel powerful. Soon after, in a scene that reveals Iman’s mental state, he describes to Najmeh how he struggles to decide the innocence or guilt of hundreds of arrested citizens. She responds with, “work is work,” but his silence and the soon disappearance of his gun signal the rapidly-approaching disintegration of his family.
And once the gun goes missing, there is nothing but silence.
Silence is a key component of this film, used expertly by Rasoulof. Whether it was the missing gun, the questioning of his wife and children or the scene where Iman drags his wife out by her hair, the silence emphasizes the anger, paranoia and anxiety that plagues Iman and his family. It also allowed the audience to see that, in times of distress, silence says a lot more than words could ever.
Throughout the movie Iman starts embodying the oppressive system in Iran and applying it to his own family. The gun serves as a symbol for his sanity and his credibility at work, and when it goes missing, Iman seeks a way to ground himself and maintain his power, finding a single source: his family. Taking them to his childhood home and locking his own daughter and wife in a cell until he “uncovers the truth,” Iman proves that paranoia can entirely consume a person’s thoughts.
Issues in developing countries can be hard to digest, making it often easier for people in the developed world to turn off the TV or close out Instagram, when horrifying images become too bothersome. Even those who view such images have the privilege of being able to go back to their regular lives. The people of Iran have no choice but to watch and live these videos and — just like how Rezvan and Sana are glued to their phones — Rasoulof wants to keep these horrific images right in our faces so that we can finally see the extent of oppression in Iran.
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” is a psychological thriller that challenges viewers to see the effects of power in flawed institutions. Similar to the sacred fig, Iranians must strangle all components of their country until it is fully deprived, so that they can be free.
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